


Smiles

by BloodyAbattoir



Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 21:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19185646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyAbattoir/pseuds/BloodyAbattoir
Summary: She bottles her smiles in jars, never to be set free into the world.





	Smiles

She bottles her smiles in jars, tiny and glowing as they are, slapping the tin tops on tightly so nothing can get in or out. She's got rows and rows of shelves in her closet, full of glowing jars, filled with smiles. Most of them are labeled, linked to some memory or another that they never showed up for.

 

The large mason gar in the corner hold the smiles that she used to give to the children in the hospital ward and library that she volunteered in. The spaghetti sauce jar on the third shelf contains only one smile, but quite a large one. It was the smile that she wore for a solid week after being accepted into her dream college. The olive jar over there holds the small smiles that she reserves for her barista and the waiter that serves her her weekly slice of pie. The tiny cherry jar a foot further down the same shelf holds the smiles for those that she truly cared for. The larger jar on the shelf below is crammed full of the small smiles she held for those she encountered on her way through life.

 

Sooner, rather than later, she's going to run out of space, and jars. Every time she opens the closet, she's bathed in a bright white light. Each time she adds another smile, the light grows brighter. Instead of letting her smiles wander freely in the world, she locks them in glass prisons and hides them in a room that is entered by none but her.

 

Several years ago, she wasn't quite like this. She smiled freely, at everyone and everything that made her day a bit brighter, or that she felt needed a bit of kindness. Her parents, her best friend, her pets, a freshly baked batch of muffins, a well-done project, you name it and it would most likely make her beam a thousand watt smile.

 

Over time, however, she began to realize that the world was not quite as wonderful as she was. Strangers gave her dirty looks, friends turned traitor, spilling her secrets, or never there for her while she was there for them. Her parents fought, and pets eventually died. Not every story has a happy ending.

 

She quickly figured this out, and instantly retreated into a shell. After figuring out that the world was a cruel place, she found out that she was only a tiny speck on the face of this godforsaken rock, and as such, she couldn't do very much to right all the wrongs in the world. It was then that she began to bottle her smiles.

 

Her mother wondered where all her preserve jars went, and why so much of the recycling went missing before it went out. Her father questioned why she never smiled anymore. They both wondered what the faint glow they occasionally saw under her closet door was from.

 

Over the next few years, she runs out of space in her closet. She begins to hide the jars in the space under her floorboards. She never realizes how bright they shine, or how pretty they are. By the time she is 18, she has completely filled her entire closet, and under all her floorboards. She takes to tossing the most recently filled jar into the river near her house, or into the bushes at the park.

 

By the time that she is 20, she has filled thousands of jars with smiles. She has also lost her passion for life. She no longer finds joy in it.

 

When she is 20 and a quarter years old, she releases the first of her smiles into the world after so many years. It was gifted to a gun, shining and heavy, smelling of oil and gunpowder and something metallic.

 

After she doesn't come down for breakfast the next day, her parents go up to her room to look for her. They find her upstairs, laying in a pool of her own blood, the gun in her slack hand.

 

There is much screaming and crying. The paramedics come and take her body away under a white sheet.

 

At the funeral, everyone questions what went wrong, why the girl who used to smile so often was lying dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

 

Afterwards, her parents refuse to enter her room. They mourned the death of their only child. They jars in the closet and under the floorboards began to gather dust. The world, however, moved on.

 

Within a week, one of the jars that had been tossed in the bushes at the park was found, by a homeless man. He used it as a night light for several months, and felt a small twinge of joy each time he saw it.

 

2 weeks after this, a jar that had been thrown into the river was pulled up in a fisherman's net. When he opened it out of curiosity, a feeling of the greatest joy in the world washed over him.

 

Over time, more jars were found, bringing joy to each and every person who found or opened them. Concentrated and aged as they were, struggling to escape for so long, they were quite potent. The jars reached people everywhere, with some of the jars that were tossed into the river reaching London and Dubai and Tokyo and Beijing and Lima and Delhi and Seoul, all places very far from Ohio.

 

Yet there were still all the jars in the house to consider.

 

Her parents had long since moved out, and the house stood empty. 10 years after she was buried, the house was set to be torn down. No one had opened the closet since she died.

 

As the bulldozer tore down her former room, there came a brilliant white light, of millions of smiles bursting free, and the wrecking crew experienced euphoria unto mania. The entire city experienced a happy feeling for weeks after. Few fights or divorces occurred, and people sought to reconcile. Many finally managed to come to terms with and accept realities that were previously too painful to even consider. None knew where this all came from, save for an old lady, who sometimes saw the future.

 

Many years ago, she saw that on this day, if the girl had not died, she would have gifted the world with the cure to Alzheimer’s.

**Author's Note:**

> This is... ancient history LOL. I think I wrote this some time pre 2015? Enjoy some of my 'well-aged' writing. It's interesting to see how much I've developed (or failed) as a writer over the past 5+ years....


End file.
